On June22, The World Affairs Council hosted David E. Sanger, Chief Washington Correspondent for the New York Times for a Guggenhime Speaker Series event titled “From Wikileaks to bin Laden’s Demise: Six Months That Changed America’s Global Challenges.” Jane Wales, President and CEO of the Council, interviewed Mr. Sanger and moderated questions from the audience.

Sanger’s visit came just hours after President Obama’s speech on the reduction of American troops in Afghanistan. When asked his views on the speech, Sanger described how the original goals of the war have changed over the past few years. Sanger noted that Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan once included stabilizing the country, training Afghan troops, opening schools, and implementing a “civilian surge.” Obama’s plan to draw down more rapidly indicates a return to the narrower goal of dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda.

Sanger also marked a distinct change in policy with regard to Pakistan. At the inception of the war, the logic was that Pakistan was a necessary partner to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. Now, says Sanger, Afghanistan acts as a base from which the US can target militants in Pakistan. The raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound was an embarrassment to the Pakistani government, particularly as bin Laden’s presence had gone unnoticed by Pakistan’s military base, which Sanger described as the “Pakistani West Point”.

Asked whether it was possible that the popular movements in the Middle East would return to Iran, Sanger thought that that it was unlikely due to the Iranian government’s brutality in crushing dissident groups. Sanger also brought attention to the Stuxnet worm that temporarily shut down Iranian nuclear facilities. He was impressed by the skill used in the attack and noted it as the first cyber weapon to successfully attack the infrastructure of a foreign state.

As always, Sanger proved to be a riveting speaker, illuminating a host of global issues faced by the United Sates and the world.

If you were unable to join us for last weekend’s WorldAffairs 2011 conference or wish to experience it again, be sure to check out our video archive. There you can watch keynotes by Robert Reich, Arun Majumdar, David Sanger, James Zogby and Stephen Hadley as well as plenary sessions on economy and energy. View the sessions here.

Additionally, we will be broadcasting these sessions on the radio four nights next week, Monday, March 28 through Thursday, March 31, at 8 PM on KQED 88.5 FM.

Exactly one year ago, Haiti experienced one of the most deadly natural disasters in recent memory. The earthquake that killed an estimated 220,000 people and left many thousands more injured, plunged the country into chaos. Next Tuesday, January 18, the Council will host a panel discussion on how the international community and Haitian people responded to the devastating natural disaster. The panel will highlight how Haiti’s health infrastructure reacted to the initial dire conditions and recent Cholera outbreaks, what role NGOs and the international community can play in fostering long-term peace and recovery and how Haitian culture and political history makes this effort challengingly unique. To learn more about the program and to register, please visit the event page here.

This week, PBS stations are airing a number of programs about the earthquake and Haiti’s reconstruction efforts. Tonight at 11 PM, KQED will present “Nou Bouke: Haiti’s Past, Present and Future,” a documentary produced by The Miami Herald/ El Nuevo Herald and directed by Joe Cardona. It focuses on Haiti’s past, present and future in the light of the apocalyptic earthquake that now marks a new chapter in the nation’s history. The current episode of Frontline, “Battle for Haiti,” asks the question “can Haiti be rebuilt without the rule of law?” That program can be viewed in full here.

Evgeny Morozov, a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and a visiting scholar at Stanford University, believes that the Internet may not be the friend of the oppressed that many think it is. He argues that while social media and the Internet have worked to the advantage of protesters and revolutionaries, they can also be used by authoritarian governments to crack down on personal privacy and spread propaganda. On February 10, the Council will host Morozov for a discussion of this view, one that he has written about extensively in his new book The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom.

To learn more and register for the program, please visit the event listing here. To listen to a short interview with Morozov from Tuesday’s episode of Talk of the Nation, click here.

“The best boost for our nation’s civic health is to ensure all children graduate from high school and complete college,” according to the 2010 Civic Health Assessment. Educational attainment is the greatest predictor of future civic engagement, this National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) report finds.

With that, this annual survey becomes yet another argument for addressing the nation’s disturbing college dropout rate, about which I recently blogged. The survey calls on philanthropists and others to help foster a culture of college completion, not just access, as well as push for a stronger focus on teaching American history and civic learning, to help boost civic appreciation.

This is the fifth such survey measuring Americans’ civic habits across a wide range of indicators, but the first since the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act called for expanding the work. The now-federal assessment is produced by the NCoC in partnership with the Corporation for National and Community Service and the US Census Bureau. Many of the survey’s statistics, covering the years 2008 and 2009, are being published for the first time, as they stem form the Census Bureau’s Civic Engagement Supplement, added to the bureau’s Current Population Survey in 2008. They’ve also developed a website, providing state and local statistics, to help community leaders better understand their community’s service and engagement activities

Among the survey’s key findings: The country’s multiracial citizens were the most politically active in 2008, though African Americans led the way in voting and whites or Caucasians led in group membership and volunteering. Meanwhile, while the overall volunteer rate is lower than it was immediately after 9/11, the years 2008 and 2009 saw the largest increase since 2003. And Millennials (aged 16 to 30) are volunteering at higher rates than Boomers did at the same age.

Perhaps most notably, the survey suggests that the internet builds civic health. While acknowledging that more metrics of “eCitizenship” need to be developed to assess its full impact, early indicators suggest that those who go online on a regular basis are more likely to be involved in offline communities as well. The report says ensuring access to broadband-quality Internet connections should therefore be a high priority.

A related issue brief released jointly with the Corporation for National and Community Service calls on philanthropists, among others, to help support efforts to develop and collect new measures of civic engagement that broaden our understanding of the term and more accurately capture the full range of participation—including metrics associated with social innovation, online engagement, corporate citizenship, social capital and public service.

The survey already defines civic engagement broadly, even including less-formal activities, such as talking about politics with family members, exchanging favors with neighbors and engaging in online activities that allow people to stay connected to each other. “If we continue to consider service as only those activities done through formal organizations or programs,” according to the issue brief, “we miss the opportunity to promote and support the many other powerful ways Americans get involved.” For example, eating dinner with other members of the household can help jumpstart people’s interest in engaging in their communities in other ways after hearing stories of service or group participation.

Maybe so. The world, and the way people engage with it, is changing, and so certainly, measurement needs to reflect that. The question is, do these social interactions that may have been seen as routine, and even taken for granted, lead to more formal activities, such as voting and volunteering? It’ll be interesting to watch for changes in the survey’s baseline data as the years go by. Interesting—and important.